I managed to wake him up at 7:10. He turned to me and said, “Well you have a different schedule than me. I sleep for ten hours. I just slept for ten hours. You sleep for 12 hours. So you need to sleep for two more hours, okay?”
He watched a single Pink Panther then we got going. On the way to school he asked “What’s caterpillar mean?” He then suggested it had something to do with eating leaves, like in another language. I said I’d have to look at the etymology of the word. We ended up discussing that word more, and made ‘etymology’ a word of the day.
As we parked the bike we saw a woman, her name is something like Orit, getting of the red Vespa scooter that we’ve seen before. She’s the one that calls August “Roger” from when they joked about his name, maybe in the pool. She said she had another helmet and offered to take him for a ride sometime.
I was able to leave at 8:06. We’d already established that I’d do a lunch check-in, then stay at the library until the end of the day, but he still wasn’t letting me leave. But it turned out he just wanted to make sure I’d be on the same bench when he was done with the day, then he was fine. He was watching Yaya at with the ball path pieces, doing a challenge from Marion to use all the pieces up, but said he wasn’t going to help.
I biked home, then biked back and was sitting on the bench when they came out for lunch at 12:35. He seemed a bit upset, but had a bookmark that he had found. It was slightly ripped and he asked if we could tape it. That may have been all he was upset about. Got him eating lunch, and of course he was done eating as soon as I started to get up to leave. Took awhile to leave, but he got into “feeding” the garbage can, picking up some garbage that was by Yaya and Bibo’s feet. Andrea came over and talked to him, and I was able to leave at 1:05.
I went to the library, then was sitting on the bench when he walked by with Anna and Marion from the garden. He didn’t see me, and I hid around a corner until he was inside. They got ready to leave and he came out at 2:55. He was such a happy boy. He had done gardening with Anna and Marion and helped “say goodbye” (harvest) to a plant. He didn’t know what it was, but said it had funny pods on it. He told Carly about it in a video. It had taken so long that he said he didn’t have time to go to makerspace. He took me over to show me where they had taken out the plant.
We went inside to get his stuff and he said a nice goodbye to Mini and gave her a hug. As he went to the bathroom he was issue ‘tickets’ like in StoryBots and I asked what the scariest animal was. The answer included “tigers, giraffes, Hippos, cuz of their muddy, scary face…cheetahs. and I think that is all.”
We ate on bench: bar, apple, Cheerios, egg. As he ate Cheerios he asked why Cheerios are so good and decided it was “Cuz I can taste the flouriness that it’s made of…I love it.”
Anna saw us and brought out the fennel they had harvested. That was the plant. We chewed some for the licorice taste. After she left he randomly asked, “Can you believe it taked Oma and opa months to get somewhere?” He asked if we could make pie sometime and so now he is really excited about baking an apple pie this weekend and sharing it with the Kerns. He had initially said he wanted to bring it to his class, but when I said I didn’t know if the teachers would want for snack he changed his mind. Really liked the idea of the Kerns though.
He wanted his iPad and played Reading4Kids for a few minutes, then we left at 4:10. As I packed up, he found 3 pushpins on the windowsill-like edge where they have the bulletin boards behind glass, next to the bench. He wanted to deliver them as “treasures” or “gifts” to mama so she could use them. We headed that way. In the center of the library building he stomped to make echoing noises. Tom was coming out of a room and made noises with him for a few seconds. They had fun.
He delivered the pushpins to Carly, then we went out to play with darts. I was going to walk home with him, but when he figured out that Carly was going to drive he wanted us to go with her. He said he didn’t have enough energy to pedal. He then proceeded to run all over the place as we headed to the car.
In the car he invented a grinder that grinds leaves and berries to make juice.
At home he watched the Pink Phink episode of The Pink Panther. I went up to do some work. Took longer than I expected, but less than an hour. He had curry, then some peanut butter crackers. He read Bob Books for Carly and had a lollipop. They were doing big numbers on the chalkboard when I came back down.
Carly then headed to the preschool curriculum night. He watched the ‘How many kinds of animals are there?’ StoryBots episode. I realized his tickets game comes from the Fun Facts. We decided another word of the day was ‘taxonomy’. He then invented a counting small things game, where he gave me the ability to see small things like atoms. He was then asking about the speed of light. He found part a part of a granola bar that Carly had left on the table and was excited about eating the rest of that. He told me, “A camel can walk in the desert for 45 hours without a single sip of water…I just know it.”
We did the science experiment he had wanted to do earlier with Carly, one of his design: water, with oil on it, then coffee poured on top. Nothing incredibly different, but the oil on top ended up all uneven and fun to look at. Out of nowhere he asked, “Remember the jewels we found at the airport? That you can’t take on airplanes?” He was referring to the display of illegal imports we had seen, in Newark, I think. We discussed ivory and why it is illegal. And looked up pictures of things out of ivory and piano keys. He said he didn’t want any ivory. And he learned that the black keys are made out of ebony.
I took him up and washed his hair. He wanted his haircut so it wouldn’t go in his mouth. Seemed like he knew he shouldn’t chew on it but didn’t want the temptation. It’s getting long enough to pus behind his ears, so a little problematic to cut it. But we blowdried his hair and then I trimmed his bangs just a little so they wouldn’t reach his mouth. Before I started he explained to me how I could cut his hair without getting close to his skin. He watched a Pink Panther superhero episode. He used the little mirror on his brush and said, “See the white around my eyes? What is it for?” He said it looked like an egg.
He had me measure his height on the growth chart and asked why we do it. I talked about curiosity and also how there can be developmental problems. We ended up talking about malnutrition.
We went in to bed. His hair was still a little damp, so he put a book on his (well, my) pillow and lay on that. He doesn’t like the feeling of wet hair on a pillow. I told a story based on ‘The boy who cried wolf’ called ‘The Zinnie who cried cat’. Instead of just one animal it had a lizard, cockroach, and cat. At the end they all run around the house and August gets really allergic.
Carly came home as I was telling the story. He wanted the rest of the story but then knew it was mama’s turn to put him to sleep, so she came in and he was asleep by 9:05.
Treasures:
